The comparison of human chant and that of the nightingale is, within Western Europe as old as the art of the chant as such. Seemingly this comparison tries to overcome the differences between art and nature, although it has been just evoked by this difference.

Baroque opera in Italy, France and Germany and their “little sister” the chamber cantata, would be inconceivable without the presentation of wished, disappointed or fulfilled love, without the interpenetration of artful chant and the model of nature.

A trip through five centuries of music history shows, how this model influenced the structures of instrumental music as well as chant.

This CD presents compositions by several European masters from the turn of the 17th to the 18th century which illustrate the richness of possibilities of musical imitation and artificial climax.